Shades of the Past: Indiscreet Tales of Japan

OFFICIAL

SECRETS

With constabulary duties to be done, to be done, The policeman's lot is not a happy one.

The Pirates of Penzance

In an article which was published recently, I commiserated with the consuls in Japan of nearly a hundred years ago, who, in addition to their regular consular duties, often had to play the parts of a judge, accountant, assessor, magistrate, arbitrator, coroner, jailer and turnkey.

Surprise having been expressed in some quarters at my statement, and doubts in others as to its accuracy, I felt sufficiently impelled to embark upon a more detailed research into those fabulous days. I soon had evidence that some consuls performed all those functions, plus a few more, for example during times of stress and emergency, and in the absence of adequate staff, even more bizarre duties such as inspector of brothels and nuisances, postmaster, and Right Hose.

The last mentioned duty was of an extra-curricular nature, and referred to the consul's position on the local fire-cart!

The local volunteer fire brigades were important entities within the structure of the old treaty-port society. One had to be a person of some substance and respectability, quite apart from wind and muscle, to hold office in such an exclusive body as say the Victorian Volunteer Steam Fire Engine Company of Yokohama of ninety years ago.

A new arrival had to have some pull—if you will pardon the pun—to gain office, even such a minor office as Suction and Split Hose in that particular lire brigade. After attaining that lowly position, an enthusiast could in course of time gain advancement, becoming in turn Left Hose, Right Hose, and finally Foreman if he happened to be a born fireman or was one of those persons who just cannot escape getting on in life. The coveted rank of Foreman was generally held by a Keswick or some such similar stalwart of one of the princely hongs, provided he had brawn and waist line, and enough wind to run a mile.

Pulling the firecart was thirsty work, and putting out fires was wet work, which perhaps explains why the annual dinners—stag of course—of the volunteer fire brigades were both strenuous and wet affairs!

Begad, Sir, last week at the fire over at that house near Creekside, 'Suction and Split Hose' sploshed so much water over the girls that their kimono clung to their figures like chemises. Poor show! Poor show! boomed Foreman Keswick of Jardines at one of those annual dinners.

However to return to the subject of this article, the doubts which were expressed as to whether consuls, and particularly British consuls, ever had to perform the various duties which I had ascribed to them, were a challenge which caused me to search among the papers and records which may still be found at the bottom of old oak chests, in the dusty cellars of some libraries, and in the bookcases of some of those bearded and wheezy antiquarians and bibliophiles who seldom emerge outdoors—a search which extended into two continents.

In quoting verbatim as I now shall—without permission—from the despatches of Queen Victoria's Consul at Nagasaki in the years 1859-1863, I do not believe I am betraying any very important national secrets. My defence can be that none of those despatches were marked Top Secret—for the reason possibly that the expression had not then been invented!

Consul Morrison at Nagasaki, the second gentleman to hold that post, arrived there on 8th August, 1859, and it is interesting to note that his first four despatches to the Legation in Yedo were on routine matters, after which he promptly got down to drawing attention to "the low rate of salary which is attached to the office I hold " After admitting that fish and fowl were comparatively cheap and drawing attention to his own most abstemious personal habits, he came to the point:

I would take the liberty to urge that some compensation more than bare subsistence is due, in consideration of an exile to the extremity of the Earth,—of banishment from society and from the relations of Home, and exposure to discomforts and privations difficult to depict and cruel to endure. 7 say nothing of the climate, which is for some months in every year destructive to health and even to property, or of the water we have to use, which at this port is so bad as to be almost poisonous. Neither do I dwell on the important and harassing duties with which a Consul is entrusted....

To cut a long story short it is good to be able to report that this appeal did not fall on unresponsive ears, and that in due course of time this plain speaking consul received an increase in salary which I have no doubt he well deserved.

The Consul, among his multifarious duties, was required to perform some of an accountancy nature, a task he does not seem to have always performed to the satisfaction of his superiors in Yedo, to whom on 21st September, 1859, he addressed the following tart despatch:

I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your Despatch No. 11 returning the accounts of this Consulate....for correction. I am deprived of the facilities for this work.... I shall not fail, however, to me my best endeavours to put these accounts in a proper state....Allow me to express my gratification at the confidence you entertain that under my supervision the accounts of this Consulate will in future be more satisfactorily rendered.

The Consul's negotiations with the local Governor and other officials are of course dealt with at length, and we find him echoing sentiments not unlike those which U.S. Consul-General Harris had expressed, although in more restrained tones. In Despatch No. 17 on 21st September, 1859, he informed the Legation in Yedo:

I have discovered that unhappily no reliance whatever is to be placed on the most solemn assurance of Japanese....

As was Harris, so also was Morrison exasperated at the uniform fate of his many representations to the Japanese authorities, most of which were pigeonholed on the excuse that instructions from the central government in Yedo would have to be awaited, a slow-motion procedure which rarely reached finality.

The consuls were also required to act as judges and arbitrators in commercial disputes, but seemingly Consul Morrison, with due modesty, was unwilling to assume that he was endowed with the wisdom of Solomon, because we find him suggesting to his superior at Yedo that application should be made to the Foreign Office that he be supplied "with such suitable law books as will assist judgement."

Four days later the overworked Consul saw some prospects of divesting himself of the duties of a turnkey by importing from Shanghai a respectable Englishman as constable. Later, when the Legation in Yedo questioned the wages which he had agreed to pay to the constable, he had the courage to point out to his superiors, for the information of the Queen's Exchequer, that by comparison a breaker of stones at home is more to be envied than my constable He then seized the opportunity to elaborate on the high cost of living:

If considered expensive, it only exemplifies what I have elsewhere pointed out, that excepting in the simplest produce of the place, we are, here at least, in a very expensive country, the burden of which falls not less heavily on our private resources than on the public chest.

That the Consul's attention was much centred upon the duties of a turnkey is evident from his despatch wherein he plans the building- of a jail, and that of a few days later where he begged approval of the expenditure necessary for a pair of handcuffs—much needed.

Consul Morrison's coronial duties were associated mainly with the violent deaths of sailors, whilst his magisterial duties were generally linked with the doings of sailors ashore on pleasure bound.

It is of interest to note that whilst his superior, Rutherford Alcock in Yedo, had dubbed the foreign community in Yokohama as comprising the scum of the earth Consul Morrison had no complaints against the British community in Nagasaki. Said he on 5th January, 1861:

The existing British community at this port numbers about 25 persons, comprising merchants, smaller traders, compradores, and a butcher, and it is satisfactory to add that it is on the whole a very well ordered Community—showing no want of respect to Her Majesty's authority and giving no occasion for complaint on the part of the Japanese.

What Morrison may have thought of the non-British community in Nagasaki is not recorded!

The Consul was looking forward to the time when he would be provided with sufficient funds to engage his own staff of Japanese—or natives as was the expression in those days—and so enable him to dispense with the assistants and linguists already made available free by the Japanese authorities. The assistants, he considered, were government spies, and the linguists just learners of English. He was however despondent over the prospects of being able to engage suitable staff and so relieve himself of some of his multifarious duties, because of the insufficiency of funds allowed:

The total amount including the linguists does not equal the sum which I myself pay for domestic servants.

The harassed Consul, anxious to show the flag of his country, had no Department of Works official to handle his building and repair problems. On 4th November, 1859, he devoted an entire despatch to justifying certain repair expenses, which comprised the purchase of a new flagstaff and eighteen boxes of glass. The necessity for both was succinctly explained in the following words:

It is a long time since the American and Dutch flags have been suitably hoisted—which the British has hitherto flown from a pole projected from a tree top! The glass is necessary as a provision against the cold in winter—in lieu of the paper windows.

When the necessity for such moderate improvements to the Japanese temple wherein his consulate was located was questioned, he sent the acid reply:

With regard to the original character of the accommodation provided for this Consulate, I cannot but think, Sir, that you have adopted a rather erroneous impression in its favour.

It is sad to relate that the despatches of this forthright Consul do not appear to have always met with the approval of his superiors and within a few months of his appointment Her Majesty's Secretary of State cautioned that Mr. Morrison should be "fully alive to the importance of moderation and patience and to the disadvantages of vexatious or useless discussion" —a rebuke which the Consul did not permit to pass without comment.

There is some reason to believe that Morrison was more historically minded than some of the officials in Her Majesty's Department for Foreign Affairs. Believing that the accommodation of Her Majesty's Consulate in a Japanese temple was a fact which should be recorded for posterity, as also should the appearance of Nagasaki in those early days, he had the imagination to commission a visiting London photographer to take a series of photographs, the total cost of all of which work amounted to the sum of $70 Mex. Those photographs will continue to live long after ministers of state are forgotten.

The Legation in Yedo was however, by no means sure that Her Majesty's Auditors would approve such reckless expenditure. The Consul, in his own defence, was thereupon obliged to explain that the care which he always exercised in the expenditure of public moneys was amply illustrated by the fact that his country's flag, which he proudly flew from the new flagpole, had actually cost $50 Mex. of which only $30 Mex. was charged in his accounts.

Even the Consular boat in which the Consul visited Her Majesty's ships, rather than flopping about on a mat in the bottom of a Japanese sampan, or wallah-wallah boat, had been purchased out of his own personal funds. Seemingly those were the days when the value of the national currency was maintained at all costs—even to the extent of the Consul in Nagasaki having to bear some portion of the expense of showing the flag.

The success of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance has been so overwhelming that it would require some courage at this late date to suggest that they snitched from the British Consular records of Nagasaki the idea that a policeman's lot is not a happy one.

I shall not therefore labour that theory beyond pointing out that fifteen years before The Pirates of Penzance was written, Consul Morrison treated his superiors in Yedo to a long despatch showing that a constable's job is "without distinction, without profit, and without prospects and that no respectable man can be retained for any length of time in the post of constable."

His own lot was obviously nothing to boast about, because in official correspondence he described the accommodation for himself and the consulate as "a wretched hovel where we have struggled against the want of almost every requisite in a house"

Apparently even the local butcher had better accommodation, because he further wrote: 'I find that the only persons in Nagasaki unprovided with comfortable habitation are the officers of H. M. Consulate"

Seemingly that was no exaggeration because his bedroom also served as a sitting room and his dining room as a public office during the day. He had one small room as a private office, but that had to be shared with his many official visitors.

The consulate was then housed in a temple, and, as millions of tourists to Japan have since discerned, it is difficult to conceive of a building that is less adaptable to a comfortable home than a Buddhist temple or an Imperial palace!

In 1861 when Morrison travelled to Yedo on official business he arrived at the British Legation just in time to be nearly murdered by Japanese ronin when they attacked the Legation that same night. Morrison showed conspicuous bravery in defending the Legation and his Minister's life. During the course of the fight he was wounded and narrowly missed having his head sliced off.

Consul Morrison was under no illusions as to the skill with which he had carried out his difficult duties in Nagasaki in the opening years of that port, and he considered he had earned promotion. When therefore the appointment of Secretary of Legation at Yedo was awarded to another, he had the courage to express his disappointment and to suggest that the Secretary of State had welched on a promise:

With the utmost deference to the pleasure of Her Majesty's Secretary of State on the arrangements which His Lordship pleases to make, I could but express the great disappointment which I naturally feel at the road to honourable promotion which appeared open to me under a promise, as it were conveyed in His Lordship's published despatch, upon which I relied, being thus unexpectedly and indefinitely closed.

Shortly afterwards Morrison decided there were occupations and climes where he could be more happy, and he thereupon retired from the service. And so there disappeared from the scene a consul who endears himself to us for the vigour with which he pursued his duties and the descriptions which he has left us of the early Settlement days.

Upon this note I bring to a close this first installment of disclosures of official secrets, which offence—heinous in some countries—has been indulged in to substantiate my statement that the lot of a consul nearly a hundred years ago, like that of a policeman, could not have been a very happy one.

ST. GEORGE

FOR

MERRIE

ENGLAND

St. George he was for England.

—Old English Ballad, 1512    

April 23rd is the day when Englishmen gather together to honour their patron saint.

Every year at this time the thoughts of Englishmen in the Far East turn to the Cross of St. George: that simple design of a red cross on a white ground; that symbol of a proud Briton who lived three hundred years after Christ, and who died rather than deny his faith at the bidding of a Roman emperor; that banner which became the rallying point for the defiant war cry For St. George and Merrie England; that blessed flag of England.

The Cross of St. George, although rarely flown in Japan nowadays, was a familiar sight in some parts about two hundred years before the Union Jack was created. In all probability the Cross of St. George was seen in Japan for the first time after the arrival of Will Adams, the English pilot employed by the Dutch, and the first Englishman to visit Japan. That was during the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

But the first occasion on which an English vessel flying the Cross of St. George was seen by Japanese, and in all probability the first occasion (except for Will Adams) that Englishmen met Japanese, was in 1604 off Pahang in Malaya when two English ships, the Tiger and the Tiger's Whelp, made a chance meeting with a junk manned by Japanese and sailing under the flag of Hachiman—a flag bearing the characters for Hachiman, the God of War. The meeting of those sea dogs of England and the Japanese pirates ended in a fight and a most bloody one that carried on until the Japanese, outnumbered and rather than surrender, died almost to the last man.

The Japanese had been pirating along the coast of China and Cambodia, which activities probably were not very different to the type of enterprise in which the Tiger and the Tiger's Whelp were engaged. The Japanese had lost their vessel by shipwreck and had seized a junk laden with rice, in which they were sailing until they could acquire something better, whilst the English were on the lookout for any prize or treasure that was worth their capturing. They met in a spirit of feigned cordiality, but each with designs upon the other. The Englishmen suspected there might be treasure concealed beneath the rice, while the Japanese had in mind capturing the English ships:

These Rogues being desperate in winds and fortunes, being hopelesse in that paltrie jurike ever to returne to their Countrey, resolved with themselves either to gaine my shippe, or to lose their lives.

So reads the English account.

One day the Japanese sprang a surprise attack and during a most bloody fight lasting four hours succeeded in killing the captain of the Tiger but were then forced back into the main cabin. There they refused to surrender and attempted to fire the ship, whereupon the English broke down the bulkhead and brought to bear upon them some of the ship's guns loaded with grape-shot.

Their legs, armes, and bodies were so tome, as it was strange to see, how the shot had massacred them. In all this conflict they never would desire their lives, though they were hopelesse to escape: such was the desperateness of these Japonians.

All the Japanese were slaughtered with the exception of one who succeeded in jumping overboard, but he was subsequently captured.

The next day.... the Generall commanded his people to hang this Japonian; but he broke the Rope and fell into the Sea. I cannot tell whether he swamme to the land or not.

An officer of the Tiger in recounting this desperate fight concluded with the comment:

The Japanese are not suffered to land in any port in India with weapons, being accounted a people so desperate and daring that they are feared in all places where they come.

In such manner happened the first meeting between Englishmen and Japanese.

In 1606 the flags of St. George and St. Andrew were combined to form the Union Flag of Great Britain, but its use was confined by proclamation to naval vessels. English merchant ships were required to continue to fly St. George's Cross and so when the English East India Company established its trading post in Japan at Hirado in Kyushu, the Cross of St. George became a familiar sight in those parts. There is at least one rare Dutch drawing now kept at The Hague, which shows St. George's Cross flying over what appears to be the residence of the Chief Merchant of the English factory at Hirado.

Will Adams later joined the English East India Company but on coming to Hirado he preferred to take up residence in a separate house (on which he always flew the Cross of St. George) rather than live with Capt. Saris the head of the English factory. He thereby set a wise precedent for the British mercantile community in Japan, which has been followed by thousands of young Britons ever since, namely it is better not to live with the boss.

Saris was not pleased with this display of independence and comments on Adams in his diary:

He would for two or three days repair to his colours which he had put out at an old window in a poor house, being a Cross of St. George made of coarse cloth.

In 1613 when Capt. Saris accompanied by Adams and a staff of eight Englishmen travelled to the Shogun's Court in Yedo, the Cross of St. George was carried at the head of the little cavalcade and was hung out in front of the inns at which they stayed en route. The first part of the voyage from Hirado to Osaka was made by sea and Saris describes the craft in his diary as:

A King's Gallye filled with 25 oars one aside and 40 men, which I did fit up in a very comely manner with waste clothes and ensigns (the Cross of St. George).

On arrival in Yedo, Saris presented to the Shogun a letter from King James I of England who styled himself "by the grace of God, King for these eleven years of the three countries of Great Britain, France and Ireland" and then in polite form and with pardonable flattery, but immense exaggeration, added that "the greatness and the splendid fame of His Highness the Lord Shogun of Japan is notorious and well known in our country"

Incidentally it was Saris who has recorded the first foreign complaint against Japanese servants, when he alleged that his majordomo (or house boy) had squeezed 10/- on the sake account! It may be of interest also to those foreigners who have been involved in labour disputes in Japan to know that the first such dispute occurred at the East India Company's factory at Hirado in 1617, but that the Englishmen were instructed by the Japanese Authorities not to accede to the demands.

Let not the public relations experts and the publicity agents of to-day think that they are pioneers in a new profession. In 1618 when Richard Cocks, then in charge of the English trading post, made his first official visit to Nagasaki from his headquarters in Hirado, his assistant, Will Adams, arrived there one day earlier and with the support of the Chinese merchants arranged to stage for Cocks a thunderous welcome, which Cocks described in a letter:

Langasaque (Nagasaki) in Japan this 21st Feb., 1618. Loving Frendes,

We arrived heare yesterday just an hower before sunne seting. Capt. Adams being arrived the day before and came out with the China Captain, all the China junks haveing their flagges and stremers with St. George amongst the rest and shot affe above 40 chambers and pieces of ordinance at my arrival.

It is evident from this letter that Adams, although then a naturalized Japanese, took advantage of this opportunity to show the flag of England—the Cross of St. George—to the people of Nagasaki and at the same time to give his boss a royal salute of 40 guns.

After 1620, on account of the growing distrust on the part of the Japanese officials in Christianity, the flying of the Cross of St. George was forbidden in Japan. A cross in any form was then a symbol to be searched for and stamped out.

Prom about 1622 the persecution of Christian missionaries and converts became violent, and more than three thousand Japanese, men, women and even children, suffered extreme martyrdom for the Christian faith. One of the final acts in this drama was the rebellion at Shimabara when nearly forty thousand Japanese, more than half of whom were women and children, fighting under Christian banners and crosses, were massacred.

Thereafter the Japanese authorities became so alarmed at the effect that the spread of Christianity might have on their own power, that they proceeded to exterminate this new religion in Japan; churches and monasteries were destroyed and even the Christian graveyards were uprooted, the tombstones overthrown and all the dead men's bones taken out of the ground and cast forth. Only the Dutch merchants remained enjoying a monopoly of trade, but at the cost of being cooped up on the small island of Deshima in Nagasaki harbour, and suffering various indignities.

Some years later, around 1672, some merchants in London felt that the East India Company was not sufficiently active and that opportunities for doing business with Japan and China were being lost. They thereupon began pressing for new charters to trade. Spurred by the possibility of outside competition the East India Company thereupon decided to send two ships, the Experiment and Return, to the East and gave very careful consideration to the flag under which they